His own failure had been unnerving. He had pursued this eminent couple for months, trying in vain to confirm suspicion by proof and strengthen a.s.surance with evidence, and always delaying the blow in the hope of gathering in still more of Germany's agents. At last he had thrown the slowly woven net about the Weblings and revealed them to themselves as prisoners of his cunning. Then their souls slipped out through the meshes, leaving their useless empty bodies in his care, their bodies and the soul and body of the young woman who was involved in their guilt.

Verrinder did not relish the story the papers would make of it. So he and the physician devised a statement for the press to the effect that the Weblings died of something they had eaten. The stomach of Europe was all deranged, and Sir Joseph had been famous for his dinners; there was a kind of ironic logic in his epitaph.

Verrinder left the physician to fabricate and promulgate the story and keep him out of it. Then he addressed himself to the remaining prisoner, Miss Marie Louise Webling.

He had no desire to display this minnow as his captive after the whales had got away, but he hoped to find her useful in solving some of the questions the Weblings had left unanswered when they bolted into eternity. Besides, he had no intention of letting Marie Louise escape to warn the other conspirators and to continue her nefarious activities.

His first difficulty was not one of frightening Miss Webling into submission, but of soothing her into coherence. She had loved the old couple with a filial pa.s.sion, and the sight of their last throes had driven her into a frenzy of grief. She needed the doctor's care before Verrinder could talk to her at all. The answers he elicited from her hysteria were full of contradiction, of evident ignorance, of inaccuracy, of folly. But so he had found all human testimony; for these three things are impossible to mankind: to see the truth, to remember it, and to tell it.

When first Marie Louise came out of the avalanche of her woes, it was she who began the questioning. She went up and down the room disheveled, tear-smirched, wringing her hands and beating her breast till it hurt Verrinder to watch her brutality to that tender flesh.

"What--what does it mean?" she sobbed. "What have you done to my poor papa and mamma? Why did you come here?"

"Surely you must know."

"What do I know? Only that they were good sweet people."

"Good sweet spies!"

"Spies! Those poor old darlings?"

"Oh, I say--really, now, you surely can't have the face, the insolence, to--"

"I haven't any insolence. I haven't anything but a broken heart."

"How many hearts were broken--how many hearts were stopped, do you suppose, because of your work?"

"My what?"

"I refer to the lives that you destroyed."

"I--I destroyed lives? Which one of us is going mad?"

"Oh, come, now, you knew what you were doing. You were glad and proud for every poor fellow you killed."

"It's you, then, that are mad." She stared at him in utter fear. She made a dash for the door. He prevented her. She fell back and looked to the window. He took her by the arm and twisted her into a chair. He had seen hysteria quelled by severity. He stood over her and spoke with all the sternness of his stern soul.

"You will gain nothing by trying to make a fool of me. You carried messages for those people. The last messages you took you delivered to one of our agents."

Her soul refused her even self-defense. She could only stammer the fact, hardly believing it as she put it forth:

"I didn't know what was in the letters. I never knew."

Verrinder was disgusted by such puerile defense:

"What did you think was in them, then?"

"I had no idea. Papa--Sir Joseph didn't take me into his confidence."

"But you knew that they were secret."

"He told me that they were--that they were business messages--secret financial transactions."

"Transactions in British lives--oh, they were that! And you knew it."

"I did not know it! I did not know it! I did not know it!"

She realized too late that the strength of the retort suffered by its repet.i.tion. It became nonsense on the third iterance. She grew afraid even to defend herself.

Seeing how frightened she was at bay, Mr. Verrinder forebore to drive her to distraction.

"Very well, you did not know what the messages contained. But why did you consent to such sneaking methods? Why did you let them use you for such evident deceit?"

"I was glad to be of use to them. They had been so good to me for so long. I was used to doing as I was told. I suppose it was grat.i.tude."

It was then that Mr. Verrinder delivered himself of his bitter opinion of grat.i.tude, which has usually been so well spoken of and so rarely berated for excess.

"Grat.i.tude is one of the evils of the world. I fancy that few other emotions have done more harm. In moderation it has its uses, but in excess it becomes vicious. It is a form of voluntary servitude; it absolutely destroys all respect for public law; it is the foundation of tyrannies; it is the secret of political corruption; it is the thing that holds dynasties together, family despotism; it is soul-mortgage, bribery. It is a monster of what the Americans call graft. It is chloroform to the conscience, to patriotism, to every sense of public duty. 'Scratch my back, and I am your slave'--that's grat.i.tude."

Mr. Verrinder rarely spoke at such length or with such apothegm.

Marie Louise was a little more dazed than ever to hear grat.i.tude denounced. She was losing all her bearings. Next he demanded:

"But admitting that you were duped by your grat.i.tude, how did it happen that your curiosity never led you to inquire into the nature of those messages?"

"I respected Sir Joseph beyond all people. I supposed that what he did was right. I never knew it not to be. And then--well, if, I did wonder a little once in a while, I thought I'd better mind my own business."

Verrinder had his opinion of this, too. "Minding your own business!

That's another of those poisonous virtues. Minding your own business leads to pacifism, malevolent neutrality, selfishness of every sort.

It's death to charity and public spirit. Suppose the Good Samaritan had minded his own business! But-- Well, this is getting us no forwarder with you. You carried those messages, and never felt even a woman's curiosity about them! You met Nicky Easton often, and never noted his German accent, never suspected that he was not the Englishman he pretended to be. Is that true?"

He saw by the wild look in her eyes and their escape from his own that he had scored a hit. He did not insist upon her acknowledging it.

"And your only motive was grat.i.tude?"

"Yes, sir."

"You never asked any pay for it?"

"No, sir."

"You never received anything for it?"

"No, sir."

"We find the record of a transfer to you of securities for some twenty thousand pounds. Why was that given you?"

"It--it was just out of generosity. Sir Joseph said he was afraid I might be--that his will might be broken, and--"